Friday, January 23, 2015

Sephardim on the cusp of coexistence

Following the murder of four Tunisian Jews in a Paris supermarket, Arthur Asseraf and Elizabeth Marcus are at pains to paint a world 'beyond black and white' - a complex picture of Arab-Jewish relations - for Reuters. They give useful context to the origins of French Jews. But they confuse cultural connections with the unequal political relationship between Jews and Arabs: Jews in Arab countries have always been a vulnerable minority. See my comment below.

A Jewish pilgrim at the Al-Ghriba synagogue on the Tunisian island of Djerba

“Jews have no problems with Arabs.”

Those were the words of Benjamin Hattab, the father of Yoav Hattab,
one of the four killed last week in an attack on a Paris kosher grocery
store, which followed the Charlie Hebdo shootings. Hattab is Tunisian
and serves as the chief rabbi of the Muslim-majority North African
nation — his comments, made in an interview after the attack, referred to his experience in Tunisia, not in France.

Sephardic Jews like Hattab — who originate from Spain, North Africa
and the Middle East — have once again become a living barometer of
Muslim-Jewish relations. To some, they represent the possibilities of
co-existence. To others, they represent the sheer impossibility of that
vision.

It is easy to see why that might be the case. Sephardic life has
always been complex and hybrid. A friend of Yoav Hattab, Yohann Taieb,
paid tribute to him by writing “In another world, he could have become a
star of Arab Idol, who loved Arabic music.” His Jewish religious
practice, too, was steeped in Arab culture. “When leading a prayer, it
was not uncommon for him to borrow tunes from secular Arab Tunisian
songs by slowing the tempo, recalling the inseparability of the Tunisian
Jewish ethos and its surrounding culture.”

Of course, many question how inseparable the two are. But, Sephardim
have also been remarkably resilient in maintaining their mixed cultural
traditions through exile. As conflict blows up once more, the community
faces many challenges, but their continued existence points to a world
beyond black and white.

The Hattabs are part of roughly 2,000 Jews left in Tunisia, after many thousands migrated en masse
in the 1960s and 1970s. The once one-million strong Jews living in Arab
countries shrank to nearly nothing in the 20th century as a result of a
messy process involving de-colonization, the rise of Arab nationalism,
Zionism and the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, and economic
migration that cut across all communities, as well as discrimination and
forced exile. Those who chose to remain have been under increasing
pressure. The Hattab’s recent loss follows the death of Yoav’s aunt, who
was killed in an attack on a synagogue in Tunisia in 1985.

France’s Jewish community — depleted after the Second World War — was
revived by the arrival of Sephardic Jewry in the mid-20th century. Now,
Sephardim are the majority among the French Jewish community. France
contains Europe’s largest population of Jews and Muslims, both hailing
mainly from North Africa.

Two starkly different accounts exist of Jewish life before they left
Arab countries. Some portray it as having been a perfect coexistence,
with older women remembering bringing pastries to their neighbors for
religious holidays. Others speak in terms of conflict, referencing only
anti-Semitism, discrimination, violence and forced exile.

Neither of these opposing versions does justice to the long,
complicated history of Muslim-Jewish relations, both in the Arab world,
and now, in Europe.

That is why, in moments like these, the Sephardim have faced huge
pressure to declare which side they are on — to choose which of these
narratives defines them as a community. Living on the frontlines, their
decisions — like whether they stay in France, or emigrate to Israel —
will be watched intently. Their individual actions are weighted with
huge significance for broader Muslim-Jewish relations, and for the
future of Jews in Europe.

My comment: this article is a curate's egg, good in parts.
Benjamin Hattab, the father of Yoav, gunned down in the kosher
supermarket in Paris, is bound to say that Jews have no problems with
Arabs: he lives among them. But the
Tunisian government did not condemn his son's murder: it was left to a
small group of minority rights activists to demonstrate their sympathy,
amid ugly rumours that Yoav's burial in Israel was a betrayal. Yes,
there is an overlap of culture between Jews and Arabs, but this did not
save Yoav, nor Yoav Hattab's aunt, herself the victim of a terror attack.

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Introduction

In just 50 years, almost a million Jews, whose communities stretch back up to 3,000 years, have been 'ethnically cleansed' from 10 Arab countries. These refugees outnumber the Palestinian refugees two to one, but their narrative has all but been ignored. Unlike Palestinian refugees, they fled not war, but systematic persecution. Seen in this light, Israel, where some 50 percent of the Jewish population descend from these refugees and are now full citizens, is the legitimate expression of the self-determination of an oppressed indigenous, Middle Eastern people.This website is dedicated to preserving the memory of the near-extinct Jewish communities, which can never return to what and where they once were - even if they wanted to. It will attempt to pass on the stories of the Jewish refugees and their current struggle for recognition and restitution. Awareness of the injustice done to these Jews can only advance the cause of peace and reconciliation.(Iran: once an ally of Israel, the Islamic Republic of Iran is now an implacable enemy and numbers of Iranian Jews have fallen drastically from 80,000 to 20,000 since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Their plight - and that of all other communities threatened by Islamism - does therefore fall within the scope of this blog.)